


Right Onward

by rhye



Series: 41 Nights/Alys Storm [5]
Category: Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Ableism, Disability, F/M, Family Drama, Family Dynamics, Family Fluff, Kid Fic, Mental Health Issues, Original Character(s), Past Cersei Lannister/Jaime Lannister, Suicidal Thoughts
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2019-10-23
Updated: 2019-10-23
Packaged: 2020-12-31 18:47:30
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 5,164
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21150461
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/rhye/pseuds/rhye
Summary: For those who have not read other works in this series: Alys is Jaime's child with Cersei. Brienne adopted her and married Jaime and had more kids and they are all living happily together on Tarth. Until genetics catches up to them, and Alys loses her sight. What can Jaime teach her about disability? What can Brienne teachhimabout responsibility? What can Galladon do to make Arthur go to freaking sleep already?





	Right Onward

**Author's Note:**

> Title comes from Milton's Sonnet 22. He was going blind but considered it God's will and refused to be in anguish, instead choosing to steer "right onward".
> 
> "To be blind is not miserable; not to be able to bear blindness, that is miserable." ~ John Milton

The first time Alys fell down the stairs, no one worried about it. After the third time, though, Alys no longer pranced up and down the stairs as she used to, but walked with a hand against the cold grey stone, looking down at each step.

After she cut Gally’s wrist while sparring with a dagger, she refused to spar again. Brienne tried to explain that injuries happen in training, but their boisterous Alys was already retreating into a small shell of herself, keeping her eyes at her feet. She spent all her time reading and riding, now, but she still seemed unhappy. Something was clearly wrong.

Finally, something happened that Brienne could not ignore:

A knock on the door interrupted Brienne’s discussion with her father. They were trying to decide on the best tax rate for almond growers, who had seen longer and better crop seasons in the past two years. It had best be decided before her father-- along with Lady Genna-- traveled to Storm’s End to pay fealty and taxes to Gendry at the moon’s turn.

“Yes?” asked Selwyn, turning to the door.

Galladon’s head peeked around the jamb, his long yellow hair falling into his eyes. “Mother, Grandfather, do either of you think you could go riding with me?”

“Sweetling,” Brienne answered, “We’re busy. Can’t father go?” Jaime preferred to do as little governing as possible. He was usually the one to take the children on outings that were beyond the scope of a septa or maester. He was also the more likely choice because he was not several moons pregnant.

“He can’t,” Galladon sighed over-dramatically. “Alys won’t go, and papa says he has to stay with her if she won’t go since it’s Arthur’s nap time and Nana Alia has her hands full. He told me to ask you.”

Selwyn smiled across the table at Brienne. “You know, Gally, I think the fresh air would do me good. And I’d like to spend time with you before I travel to Storm’s End. Come on lad, let’s go to the stables.”

Brienne interrupted their retreat. “Gally,” she said sharply, “Alys won’t ride?”

He shook his yellow mop of hair.

“Did she say why?”

“No. She just doesn’t want to anymore, she said.”

Brienne nodded to her father, who marshalled Galladon away.

Brienne organized the desk, and then turned her steps to the library. No doubt that was where she would find Alys.

Alys was reading quietly in a window seat. Jaime was not there, but he was nearby, she knew. He liked to spend time with the children, but he didn’t prefer to do so in the library.

“Where’s your father?” She asked Alys.

Alys looked up. Her eyes were a shocking color of green, and her hair was not Galladon’s light yellow, but a deep burnished gold. Her curls were pulled back into plaits, as was her preference.

“I think he went to get ink. He said he had some letters to write, since we’re in the library.”

“Is it true you didn’t want to ride today?”

Alys didn’t answer, and Brienne drew closer.

“Alys, why don’t you want to ride any more?”

Again, Alys was silent. She’d gone still, like a hare under the hunter’s glare.

Brienne kneeled before the girl. “Alys, sweetling, look up at me.”

Hesitantly, Alys lifted her eyes to her mother’s. “Mama,” she said in a breathless little whisper, the quiet plea of a girl much younger than eight years. Tears began to overflow her eyes and trail down her cheeks as if she had been holding them in for all eight of those years. “I think I’m dying,” she whispered, and then she sobbed with a sound like a thundercrack and threw herself into Brienne’s arms.

Brienne was shocked. She could do little but hold Alys, rocking her gently, rubbing her back as though she were again a babe. “Hush, sweetling. Use your words and tell me what’s wrong.”

Alys sat back into her seat and wiped her tears and snot ungraciously on a fold of her skirts. “Something’s wrong, mama. Something’s wrong with _me_.”

Brienne felt out of her depth. “Tell me, mayhaps the maester can make it better for us.”

Alys sniffled. “I… I can’t see so well. Everything’s sort of yellow and flat and it’s worse at night. I can’t do stairs well and I can’t fight well and now I’m afraid to even ride.” She hiccuped and then sobbed again.

“But you can read,” Brienne pointed out helpfully.

Alys just sobbed harder, though. “That’s going to disappear too, I just know it.” She cried so hard onto Brienne’s shoulder that the girl was gasping for air.

That was how Jaime found them. Brienne’s eyes met his and she said quietly, “Can you bring Maester Coelum?”

*****

The next month passed in uncertainty. Maester Coelum recommended a tincture for Alys, but it had little effect on her sight. Soon, the blacks at the center of her eyes looked milky and even books were beyond her reach. Brienne ached when she recalled Alys’s anguished crying in the library. Since that day, though, Alys had borne her illness with stoicism.

Without any improvement, Maester Coelum sent letters out to associates to ask their advice. None said anything helpful. On a whim, Brienne suggested he write to Samwell Tarly of Horn Hill, currently in King’s Landing. He agreed. Brienne could only hope that Sam-- the best healer she knew despite his not having finished a maester’s chain-- may know what to do for Alys.

*****

She and Jaime were in the hallway, discussing plans for the upcoming birth of their fourth child, when Maester Coelum found them.

“Milord, milady, I’ve had a response from Samwell Tarly. It’s… as I thought. Cataracts, though unusual in one so young. It can’t be helped.”

“Cataracts!” Jaime balked. “She’s not yet seen her ninth name day!”

“I know, milord, but it’s not unheard of. In fact, in the Targaryen family line, there were several children who went blind even before eight, of cataracts just like these. It’s thought…” He hesitated then. “It’s thought to be a problem of their, uh, family line being held so close.”

It was a polite euphemism, but Maester Coelum might as well have spoken plainly, for she and Jaime both heard him plainly. She saw it in Jaime’s face-- his jaw going lax in horror, his eyes wide and unblinking. Then his head dropped and without a word he stormed off.

“Thank you, Maester Coelum,” Brienne said. “Your diligence in this matter has been appreciated, as has your discretion.”

The maester bowed, then straightened. “One more thing, milady. Samwell Tarly was working on a new system of writing for Maester Aemon, when he was at the Wall. Maester Aemon was too old to get the hang of it, but Tarly would very much like to see whether Lady Alys might not be young enough to read it. After all, she does so love reading.”

“Writing?” Brienne asked. “How can she read without vision?”

“It’s done with a needle.” He fished in his pocket and brought out a piece of parchment, handing it to her. Someone had used a needle to prick tiny holes in the parchment. It seemed randomly done to her.

“Certain layouts of dots signify specific letters. So you see, we don’t have to teach Lady Alys to read from the beginning, only to translate the patterns of dots into the letters she already knows.”

Brienne was skeptical, but what harm could it do? “How would you proceed?” she asked.

“I’d like your permission to teach her this alphabet, and then to transcribe a page of one of her favorite books in this manner, to see if she can learn to make it out.”

“Yes, please do that.” She nodded to the maester and turned to follow Jaime’s footsteps.

She found him standing stock still in their bed chamber. He spun quickly towards her. His eyes were manic. She noticed then that he had punched the looking glass, and not with his gold hand. His knuckles were flecked with blood. She reached for his hand. “You’re bleeding.”

He jerked it away from her. “You shouldn’t have wed me. You made me believe I could escape my crimes, but they followed me.” His voice was high and tight.

Brienne felt anger boiling into her throat. Someone would have to break the news to Galladon and Arthur, to her father and Genna, to Tyrion, to the King and Queen-- she would have to make some of these seem casual missives. She didn’t want any of them to hear it from rumor, but she couldn’t write to ask for sympathy. It was not, after all, the end of Alys’s life. She was unlikely to lose anything more than her sight, and people lived without eyesight every day. Still, there was much to be done. Yet somehow she had to _also_ find the time to _yet again_ reassure Jaime. Was blindness really _so bad_? He had been raised among horses and dogs and sheep and goats and must know-- must _always_ have known-- that bloodlines are meant to be crossed. Was he discovering only _now_ that actions have consequences?

There was much to do, and her children would need her comfort. Jaime would have to wait in line behind them. She turned without saying more and left.

*****

Her conversation with Alys was tear-filled, but the girl had not really believed that she would get her sight back, so the news didn’t break her. Alys was excited about the possibility of reading despite her failing eyes, but worried about how hard it would be to learn, and who would remake all her books in this way. Brienne reminded Alys that they had no lack of money, and any number of people would be happy to punch holes in paper for gold.

Brienne held Alys’s hand through dinner. Jaime didn’t join them. After dinner, she and Alys spoke to Gally and Arthur together about their new normal, brainstorming ways for the family to be helpful to Alys. Galladon decided to learn the new type of writing so he could still pass notes to Alys. Arthur decided to do a better job keeping his toys off the floor of the nursery so she wouldn’t trip on them. That night, Brienne slept in the nursery with the children, under the blankets in Alys’s tiny bed. When she thought of Jaime alone in their bed, she felt only anger.

Jaime also wasn’t present when they broke their fast in the morning, though this wasn’t so unusual. The family ate in stony silence. Alys was the talkative child, usually, but she seemed to have nothing to say. When they were done, Alys’s chin quivered and she whispered, “Is papa angry at me?”

Brienne assured the children that Jaime was only taken with a cold. She hated to lie to them, but she could not have Alys thinking she had done something wrong. Besides, it was almost the truth. Jaime did not have a cold, but he was ill, in a way. His old demons had awoken.

That night a storm broke over Evenfall Hall. Brienne spent the night again in the nursery, in Alys’s bed, her arms wrapped around Alys.

Once, the girl whispered, “It would be better if I were dead.” Brienne told her that was far from true, but Alys didn’t hear Brienne’s words. Or mayhaps she simply did not believe them. Brienne had experienced loss and adversity, but she had never lost a part of herself. Alys needed Jaime.

Arthur had trouble sleeping on account of the storm. He complained incessantly about Brienne sleeping in Alys’s bed instead of his. His fifth name-day had only just passed, so Brienne reminded herself not to be cross with him. Galladon had no such qualms, though. He suddenly barked at Arthur to be quiet and sleep. Arthur did not take kindly to being told what to do by his brother. Brienne drifted off with Alys while Gally and Arthur called each other names. She guessed she still slept more easily than Jaime.

In the morning, Brienne crept out before the children woke. She needed to rouse Jaime from his nest of sorrow and self-pity.

Jaime was not asleep. He was spread-eagle on the bed, his eyes rimmed with the darkness of someone who had not slept well. He didn’t turn towards the sound of the door opening.

“I should have died with her,” he whispered. “Death would be better than this.”

Brienne was tired. She snapped open the curtains. Sunlight poured into the room, and Jaime flinched.

“Maybe you should have,” Brienne said without pity, “but you didn’t. Was marrying me and having a family really so bad that you wish you could undo it?”

“What?”

“Think how your words sound, Jaime. You’re telling me that your life with me has been worse than death.”

“That’s not what I mean--”

“That’s what you said. I should have let you die in the Riverlands.”

“Brienne--” He was sitting up now. Good.

But Brienne was done listening to him. “Watching your children grow is worse than death? Being married to me is probably the worst fate you could imagine for yourself. An ugly oaf--”

“Brienne!” His voice reverberated in the chamber. “That is _not_ what I said.” He stood.

“In point of fact, it is.” She turned to face him. She was so angry she could hardly see straight.

He sighed heavily, blowing air so close to her than her hair fluttered. He hadn’t eaten in a great while either, from the sour-sweet smell of his breath.

“I’m sorry,” he said. “I just meant--”

“I know what you meant,” she interrupted. “You would rather die a hundred times than understand that your actions and choices have consequences for people aside from yourself. For people you love.”

He opened his mouth, and then closed it again.

“Your death would change nothing. It cannot undo your actions. It would not restore Alys’s sight. It would be cowardice to leave _me_ to manage the consequences of _your_ actions so you can cavort with your sister in one of the seven hells.” The image was as bitter in her mind as on her lips. Perhaps Jaime truly did regret making a life with her.

A moment later, his pride fell away. “You are right. You always are,” he whispered. He didn’t sound as though he was speaking to her at all, but like he was talking to himself, amazement on his lips. “I’m sorry,” he said. He laid a hand on her cheek.

She swiped his hand away. “Don’t apologize to me. Your petty actions have hurt Alys. She thinks you are angry with her. She believes that she, too, would be better off dead. Perhaps you can tell her that she is right.”

Jaime looked stricken at this.

“Or perhaps,” Brienne continued, “You can explain that her life may change, but not entirely for the worse. Everyone is walking around Alys as though she _were_ dying. She needs to be reminded that this is still the beginning of her life. She is more than her eyes, as you are more than a hand. She will not believe it from me.”

Jaime nodded. “Is this the quest my princess sets for me to earn her forgiveness?” His eyes shone an earnest green.

“I see no princesses here,” she replied. “It is the quest of a father who cares about his child.”

“Brienne,” he stepped closer, perhaps sensing the anger still roiling through her veins. “I chose you. I choose you still. Nothing could change that. I chose you over ease, over death, over freedom, over obscurity, over every instinct that compelled me not to.”

“That’s hardly a compliment. ‘All my instincts told me not to’--”

“Hush. I didn’t say _all_. Just the more misguided ones. And I would choose you again and again. I thought perhaps you wished I had let you have your freedom, now that you were reminded that I…” He seemed unable to finish.

“I never once forgot that you lay with your sister. I know who you are.”

He smiled kindly. “You do, my lady.” He stepped closer to her, close enough to kiss, though he did not touch her. “I’m sorry,” he whispered. “You don’t deserve to have me putting you through these fits of anguish.”

She held his face in her hands, not with gentleness or reverence, but with frustration. She wanted to shake him. “I also chose you, Jaime. It is rarely an easy choice, but I make it every day.”

“One wonders why,” he asked. His eyes were so close.

“Love,” she said, and released his face. She felt her cheeks heat.

Jaime was smiling at her, his dark mood seemingly gone. “Look at you,” he groaned softly. “You’re embarrassed to admit your love. You have been married to me these eight years and given me children.” His hand found her growing waist. “And yet you still blush to admit you love me. Are you a maiden, embarrassed to be in love?”

“I’m embarrassed because of _whom_ I love. Anyone with common sense can see you’re more trouble than you are worth.”

He laughed. “Maidens need deflowering, I think.”

She blushed even hotter. How did he turn her anger into lust so easily. “Your daughter, ser.”

His smile fell again and he nodded. Without another word, Brienne left the room so he could dress. If she stayed until he was disrobed, she would be late for her morning meeting with her small cadre of advisors.

*****

Jaime had dressed, broke his fast alone, and then went to hunt for Alys. He finally found her in the library, pouring over blank parchments with Maester Coelum. Her brow was furrowed as if in concentration.

“What’s this?” Jaime asked, choosing one small blank parchment and noticing the needle-fine holes punched through. Maester Coelum was making more, his thick fingers threading a needle and length of thread through another parchment.

Alys sighed, but sank farther into her chair.

“My lord,” Maester Coleum started, “Lord Tarley developed a writing system for Maester Aemon when he was at the Wall. The Maester was unable to learn it, but Samwell thought Alys, being young and with a clever mind, might have more luck.”

“How does it work?” He pulled a chair over to their table.

“Each letter is approximated by a series of raised holes. See--” Maester Coelum produced a small sheet with a single dot.. “The letter a.”

“One, for the first letter of the alphabet?” Jaime asked.

“Precisely. Can you pick out b?”

Jaime shuffled through the parchments until he saw one with two dots.

“Close,” the Maester smiled. “That’s actually c.” He rooted around the table. “This one’s b.” He handed a piece to Jaime. It had two dots on it, the same as the other.

“How can you tell?”

“Notice the papers are taller than they are wide. B is vertical. C is horizontal.”

“That seems unnecessarily complex,” Jaime grumbled.

“Perhaps, by Lord Tarley worked out that this was the easiest to tell by touch.”

Jaime turned to Alys. “What letter have you got there?,” he asked.

“I dunno,” she mumbled, throwing the parchment back towards the table. It missed and fluttered to the floor. Jaime picked it up wordlessly and set it with the others.

“Maester Coelum, I thank you for your work. Do you think I could have a moment alone with your pupil?”

“Of course my lord. I will be in my rooms if the lady wants to continue her lessons.”

“The lady doesn’t,” Alys said.

“Thank you,” Jaime told the maester as he left. The door shut behind him, and the room’s silence was foreboding.

“I’m sorry,” Jaime started. “I’ve been unforgivably rude, as your mother let me know.”

“She said you were sick.”

“But you knew I wasn’t,” he added.

She nodded. “You’re ashamed of me.”

Jaime felt as though he’d been hit in the chest with an arrow. “No. No. Nothing could be farther from the truth.”

“I shouldn’t even be alive.”

“When I lost my hand, I also thought I should die, you know. I thought there could be nothing left for me. I thought I _was_ that hand. But if I had died, I would never have you, or Gally or Arthur. Or your mother. The best parts of my life came after I lost my hand. I never imagined I could have so much to look forward to.” She didn’t respond, so he unstrapped his gold hand, and took Alys’s hand in his left. He then laid her hand across his empty wrist. “Alys, people can be broken in many different ways. _Most_ people are, in some way. But you have so much joy ahead of you in life. You are perhaps the least broken of us all, even without your eyes. This family needs you.”

He could see the tears beginning to spill over onto her cheeks. Her hand was wrapped around his stump now, bruising it. “Father,” she sputtered, bursting into tears, “I just… I just… I _know_ why this is happening to me. I overhead Maester Coelum.” She cried so hard that she couldn’t speak for a while. Jaime lifted her onto his lap like the small child she still was. He wrapped his arms around her and cooed into her hair. He could not guess what she had overheard or how she would have made sense of it. The girl knew Brienne was not her mother. She had the surname Storm. Still, she knew nothing of her true mother. Or so Jaime thought.

But the crying girl on his shoulder threw his world into doubt with her tiny declaration. _I overhead Maester Coelum._ Say what? To whom?

“No one knows why these things happen.” It was an empty platitude. Certainly people _did_ know. Things like this happened when you fucked your twin sister, who also happened to be your cousin, because your father and mother were cousins themselves. _At least it’s not all my fault._ It was a hollow victory. “Your mother said you thought I was angry with you?”

Alys was calming enough to sniffle instead of sob. Her next words cut Jaime to the bone. “Don’t call her that. She’s not my mother.”

Jaime stilled. His heart hammered. “She is,” he said quietly. “In all the ways that matter, she is.”

“If she were, I could still see,” she groaned. “I wish she was. I would love to be a real part of this family. But now I will always be the blind bastard.”

He kissed her hair and held her, trying to figure out the right words. But Alys kept talking instead, and it was worse than silence.

“When Maester Coelum assigned the histories, I read them, you know? Galladon never even tried, but I know he’s not such a good reader as I am. When I first figured out who my mother was, I thought I was like King Jon. Maybe you had called me your daughter because your sister was dead. But then when I read the section on King Joffrey, I understood that wasn’t true.”

“Honey--”

“And that’s why I’m blind. I heard Maester Coelum tell Nana Alia it was on account of who my mother was, and when you didn’t come to dinner, I thought you were angry to be reminded. I thought maybe Mama didn’t even know.”

“Honey,” he stroked her hair. “Your mother and I don’t have any secrets. None. She was there when you were born. She worked to make her milk come in so she could feed you. She was the one who made the plan to bring you to Tarth. She raised you for months before I could rejoin her here. I truly _will_ be angry with you, if you ever say again that she is not your mother. But no, I was angry with myself.”

“I didn’t know any of that about Mama,” Alys sighed.

“Do you-- do you have anything you want to ask me?” He held his breath, waiting for questions about Cersei or Joffrey, or even Tommen and Myrcella. He didn’t want to face this, but she deserved the answers.

Instead, she asked, “Can you learn these letters with me, Father? Gally said he wanted to try too.”

“Of course,” he answered, kissing her head. “We can drag your mother and Arthur in and make it a family activity.”

Alys laughed. “Arthur won’t set foot in the library.”

“I know it, but we have ways. We can hide his wooden weapons and make him learn the letters to find them, maybe.”

She laughed at this idea.

He continued. “We could do a castle-wide hunt. Have Maester Coelum set it up, and we have to find where all our things are by learning the writing.”

“That sounds more fun than sitting at a desk feeling scraps of paper,” she nodded, suddenly excited.

“Yes, it really does.”

*****

Within a fortnight, Brienne was pleased her father and Genna had returned to Tarth. After their arrival dinner, Alia took the children to the nursery. Almost as soon as their shadows disappeared beyond the door, Selwyn commented, “Alys’s eyesight seems quiet worse. Has the maester found nothing to help?”

Brienne exchanged a heavy glance with Jaime. She shook her head. “He has not and he will not. But we are learning a new writing system that Alys can read with her fingers.”

“Will not?” Genna asked. “But she’s so young! Was it a fever? I had a friend who lost her vision to a fever when she was ten and two, but I don’t recall a fever.”

“It was no fever,” Jaime said, his voice tight. “It was--”

“Inexplicable,” Brienne finished for him. “Maesters cannot know the cause of everything.”

Jaime’s eyes met hers. She could almost hear his thoughts. _But they know the cause of this._

She shook her head, and said aloud. “The cause matters not. What matters is how we choose to proceed. I won’t lock her up in a tower to become an old maid. It’s unfortunate that most of her hobbies require vision, but we will find new hobbies. I’ve a mind to employ a musician.”

The men were watching Brienne, astounded. Genna smiled broadly, though. “You see, Selwyn. I told you she is a natural mother.”

His eyes crinkled at the edges. “Soon for the fourth time. How long do you think, Brienne?”

She groaned. “Maester Coelum says two moons yet.”

“Two! Mayhaps the gods are gifting you with twins.”

“He says not,” Brienne answered. “But it’s a big child, if only one.”

The talk turned from Alys to more mundane details of life in Evenfall. Jaime was moving and speaking with ease, Brienne noticed. She had not meant to offer him absolution. She did not think he needed it. The recklessness with which Jaime had loved his sister was also the recklessness that had allowed him to love someone as homely and huge as she. When he loved, he loved, and the opinions of the entire world could rest in the seven hells below.

*****

Long ago-- even before Brienne was expecting another child-- she and Arya had exchanged some half-thought plans for Alys to travel to Storm’s End to train with Arya. Alys never took to a sword like her parents, but she had favored a dagger. It was a weapon of last resort; Alys didn’t want to be a warrior, but she wanted to be capable of defending herself. Brienne could train her passably well, but Arya was the best.

Then Alys had gone blind, and Brienne had tried to include this in a banal raven to Storm’s End, noting that their plans for Alys to learn from Arya were now to be put to bed.

Nearly two moons since writing to cancel these unformed plans, Brienne received a surprising raven from Storm’s End. It was from Arya. In the note, Arya asked why Alys’s blindness meant she could not fight. Arya had said: _I agree, daggers might be more dangerous than you would like. A staff, then? I was blinded for a time at the House of Black and White. I learned faster blind than if I had used my vision. I could teach her. I could teach her to see _everything_ without her eyes. But she must be unafraid._

Brienne stared in shock at the message. Her surprise was deeper than she might have expected from the message on the parchment. She was starting to feel something at work here. First, Samwell Tarley knew a way of writing. Then Arya Baratheon knew a way of fighting. And are there two people more responsible for seeing that Alys was delivered to Brienne alive? Brienne feels almost as though it is a puzzle and she has just understood how the pieces fit together. She dislikes fate, but can’t escape the sense of it now. Alys, it seems, is only now becoming who she was always meant to be.

*****

By the time Jaime’s fourth babe was born, Alys had learned all her pinpoint letters. It helped that he and Brienne had told her that she could travel to Storm’s End and learn to fight with a staff just as soon as she could send and receive her own letters. Galladon and Jaime learned alongside her. Galladon thought it a marvelous secret code, and Jaime was hard-pressed to disagree. Surprisingly, Jaime found the code came to him with better ease than written letters. Jaime also pressed Tyrion to learn, and suggested it may behoove the King and Queen to know a code that so few others knew. Brienne struggled a bit, and Arthur was too young to learn. Lord Selwyn had begun to learn on Brienne’s urging.

Before he knew it, he was on the docks with his family, hugging goodbye to Alys. She would be safe in Storm’s End, despite Arya’s presence. Or mayhaps because of it. Nonetheless, she would be missed in Tarth. Galladon was beside himself for being parted from his sister, but he had a new sister to care for in the meantime. Brienne had been delivered of a girl they had named Catrisa. Arthur called her CatCat, though, and the name was quickly sticking.

Alys laid a tender kiss on her sister’s head. She even hugged Brien, Podrick and Alia’s son, who was a year younger than Galladon and whom she seemed to fight with more than she did her brothers. Finally, she stepped into a skiff that would bear her to the ship, which would in turn take her to Storm’s End.

Brienne had refused to lock Alys in a tower, but Jaime wondered if maybe this wasn’t the other extreme. She was so young still. But her smile told him all he needed to know-- she was ready for this small, safe journey into a larger world.


End file.
